


Hiatus

by Domenika Marzione (domarzione)



Category: Leverage
Genre: Eliot Spencer's complicated past, Episode: s03e15 The Big Bang Job, Episode: s03e16 The San Lorenzo Job, Gen, Past
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-29
Updated: 2015-06-29
Packaged: 2018-04-06 19:32:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4233990
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/domarzione/pseuds/Domenika%20Marzione
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Field-stripping the weapon that is Eliot Spencer.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hiatus

**Author's Note:**

> A follow-up to [this](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1453069/chapters/9441342), although obliquely because I stopped before the actual connection. My first attempt at anything _Leverage_ , so pardon the roughness; it's a voice test more than anything.

“Hardison, I want you to do a little forensic accounting on Moreau’s holdings,” Nate said as they waited in the lounge for the connecting flight back to Boston. “I’m happy to let Ribera take the villa and the bank accounts and whatever else Moreau’s got in San Lorenzo, but I don’t think he needs Moreau’s more interesting possessions. Neither does Moreau and, let’s face it, his arms are going to be long enough to reach past his prison bars.”

Eliot thought Flores would do a respectable job keeping Moreau from operating with impunity, but Moreau was too good at what he did for anyone on San Lorenzo to render him harmless. Eliot and Hardison and Parker had gone through the villa while Nate and Sophie had been wrapping up at the palace – Parker and Hardison had gone through it, really, while Eliot had handed out pink slips in the form of concussions to Moreau’s in-country flunkies. They’d come away with laptops and data storage and whatever else looked interesting or shiny because Hardison wasn’t ever going to tell Parker ‘no’ so that she’d listen.

Hardison had thought he could get everything he needed from the computer stuff they’d come away with and he’d been eager to get started, which was why he’d started typing before the plane had left San Lorenzo and hadn’t stopped until the flight attendant had warned him that they were about to land in Miami. He’d pulled it back out and was click-clacking away now, but he grunted acknowledgment that he’d heard Nate.

“Most of the fun stuff is going to have to wait until we get home,” he said, not looking up. “But I’ve already got enough here to keep him from selling SAMs for smokes or whatever he was planning to do in prison. You got a favorite charity for his Swiss bank accounts or should I find something in San Lorenzo and call it good?”

He was looking at the screen, so he missed Sophie’s and Parker’s matching expressions of outrage at the possibility that this would be one of the cases when the team wouldn’t take a cut beyond expenses. Nate usually wasn’t so noble when it wasn’t some civilian’s life savings they were getting back, but Moreau’s cash was blood money and Eliot honestly didn’t know which way Nate was going to go here. He personally hadn’t thought about the cash, too wrapped up in Moreau’s shit and his own role in slinging it, but he wouldn’t complain if the destruction of Moreau’s empire was the only payoff he got. It was blood money and he’d spilled plenty of the blood Moreau had needed to get it.

Nate held up his hand to forestall protests. “We’ll talk about it later, once we see how much there is. But it’s not the money that should be the priority here. Moreau bought and sold a lot of merchandise that needs to be taken off the market permanently before it falls into the wrong hands. We do that, then we can see what kind of cash is left over.”

Which was an answer but not a solution and Eliot knew that Nate knew it well enough. But Nate was hung over as hell and probably didn’t want to deal with the argument.

Once they got back to Boston, Eliot told Nate he was going away for a little bit and Nate didn’t try to stop him. Everything to do with Moreau had stirred up too many bad memories, reminding him of who he’d been, and he didn’t want that man to be around the life he’d built for himself since. Eliot the Villain had no place in Boston and so he took his car and drove until there was nothing he recognized and nothing those memories could poison. He would never stop being that man, that blood was never going to wash clean, but he could push him far enough under the surface that he could look in the mirror and only see the present and not the past.

He wound up in Marietta, Ohio, which seemed like a good enough place as any, and spent a week hiking around in Wayne National Forest taking Eliot Spencer apart, cleaning the component parts as best he could, and putting him back together in good working order before Parker called him on his sat phone and asked if he was okay with people yet.

“People ain’t the problem, darlin’,” he told her because a week of being very honest with himself made it hard to lie to her, even by omission. “You just checking in or do you need me?”

The team usually took a few days away from each other after a job, so he’d been long gone before anyone would have looked for him and Nate wouldn’t have volunteered the information unless asked. Nate and Hardison would have gotten together to look over Moreau’s assets, though, and maybe they had questions that they thought he could answer. Or maybe Parker wanted him to tell Nate not to give away the money. Or maybe there was a job. Or maybe none of the above because Parker sometimes liked to try out new social skills on him because he wasn’t Nate or Sophie, who’d try to be her teachers, or Hardison, whose good opinion she didn’t want to risk by being awkward. He couldn’t imagine how Parker had decided that _he_ was the safest option, but he couldn’t imagine how Parker arrived at most of her decisions.

“Both?” Parker replied, sounding like her mouth was full of something. “Nate’s picked out a job, but it’s not starting for three weeks. It’s in Alaska. We’re going mountain climbing.”

She sounded excited about it and he let her tell him about it as he walked along the trail he’d picked out. Hearing her voice – and Hardison’s in the background, correcting her details and griping about cold weather gear – was good, which Eliot took to mean that he’d done what he’d come here to do, buried Eliot the Villain deeply enough to keep him quiet. So when Parker asked if he was coming home soon, he assured her he was. 

**Author's Note:**

> [Also posted to Tumblr](http://laporcupina.tumblr.com/post/122709683724/uhm) if you'd like to like or reblog there.


End file.
